Veeam Agent for Windows

Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows – The network location cannot be reached

by

This blog post is the first with Veeam as a topic for years! I can only hope that it helps at least some people struggling with the same problem I had.

I’m a PC gamer. Still. When I find some time for fun and games, you may find me on the grounds of Battlefield 2042, or maybe I’m driving a tractor in Farming Simulator 2022. My gaming computer is still capable of playing the most recent games. Maybe not with the best graphics and most recent graphic technologies, but they run and make fun.

Anyways.

On this gaming PC, I’ve installed the Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows (the free one). Since ages. It works well, but sometimes, the backup fails. Even if you have your games available on demand to be downloaded at any time (Steam, EA, Ubisoft, etc.) and don’t need to install the games from DVDs anymore, it is still annoying if your disk goes bad or something screws up your Windows. I’m using a Synology NAS as my backup target, connected over a 10 Gbit/s ethernet link. The computer itself is equipped with some Samsung NVMe SSDs, so even a full backup is done pretty quickly.

The point is that the computer always takes some time until the network connection is ready and working fine. That’s by design. You log in with Windows Hello, for example, the Desktop is loading, and somewhen the LAN connection is also ready. But Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows already started its job (in case it’s scheduled and if it has missed that time slot) before the network is ready. And this job will fail because the network is not yet ready.

Error: [PCNAME] Failed to get disk free space. The network location cannot be reached.

I searched for a while on the internet and stumbled across a Veeam forum post. There they mentioned enabling the “When backup target is connected” function.

I enabled this feature and tried it out. It worked.

The backup job will now usually succeed.

Yes, usually. Veeam Agent still starts the job before the network is ready (directly after logging in to Windows). And this job may fail. But the job will start again as soon as there is connectivity to your NAS (SMB share). And this time, the job runs just fine and successful.

Veeam – Prepare yourself and your infrastructure against Ransomware

by

A little more than a week ago a new ransomware called WannaCry hit various computers and IT systems, private persons and businesses, all around the world. More than 200’000 computers in up to 150 countries, experts say. That’s a lot. It happend fast. And this ransomware created also some serious damage.

ransomware

Yes, the red marked countries are those affected by WannaCry…

(Image by Wikimedia Commons)

Ransomware preparedness and recovery

Not only firewall, even hardware appliances or software firewalls on your computers, should be installed, but also a decent antivirus and anti-malware scanner should be in place. Obviously with daily updates and new signatures at least.

But when desaster strikes, it’s probably to late to update your security systems. The digital pest is on your system, somehow it made it’s way through various security barriers. Probably through security flaws, undetected by any antivirus or firewall, via mail, drive-by downloads or what not. What can you make then? Glad you have a backup of your systems and your data! Oh, did i mention to air-gap your backups? It doesn’t help when you’ve got ransomware-encrypted backup. The air-gap becomes more and more popular, not only for private users but also for big companies.

To have a 1TB external USB drive with your data, which is safely ejected after successful backup (Veeam Agent for Windows FREE does that), is ideal for your home computer, or your laptop. And absolutely recommended to do so. But imagine your 20 or more terabytes in your office? All your virtual (and physical) servers? Mail data? SharePoint and so on?

Veeam recently released some blog posts and white papers about ransomware topics. I’d like to share those valuable bits and bytes and ressources with you.

White paper

Rick Vanouver, Director of Technical Product Marketing at Veeam, created a white paper with the name “Designing Veeam Availability Suite to Protect Against Ransomware Threats”. Get your copy here:

https://www.veeam.com/wp-veeam-availability-suite-protection-against-ransomware-threats.html

…and learn more about:

  • Offline storage, the most effective ransomware resiliency technique
  • Using different credentials for backup repositories
  • The need to have more types of restore points that are more frequent

Blog post

But Rick created not only the white paper but also a comprehensive blog post about “Ransomware resiliency & Availability: The endpoint is a great place to start” which is available here.

This blog posts shows you how you can use both Veeam Agent for Linux and Veeam Agent for Windows in your environment. It doesn’t matter whether it’s installed on a server or a computer, Veeam Agent for Linux and Windows are two pieces of software which are tightly integrated into the Veeam Availability Suite yet, and will be even tighter integrated into the next version 10 of Veeam Availability Suite.

At this point I would also like to refer to the early tipps for some of the early attacks and some practical tipps when using Veeam Backup & Replication.

E-Book

Last but not least, Veeam and Conversational Geek are offering a free e-book about the above topic. This e-book not only gives you an insight into the ransomware threat, but also reviews the fundamentals of top notch ransomware preparedness and recovery, in order to help you protect yourself and your organization.

Download it here:

https://go.veeam.com/ransomware-awareness-education

Learn more about:

  • Ransomware milestones, key capabilities and impact
  • Key layers of ransomware protection and preparedness against attacks
  • Quick and painless recovery from backups
  • And much more!

 

Veeam – NEW Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows 2.0

by

With Veeam Backup & Replication you can backup your whole virtualized infrastructure in a fast and easy way. It doesn’t matter if you’re using Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware vSphere, or if you’re using both virtualization platforms. It just works TM!

But what about physical workloads? Or even workloads in your private or public cloud? Due to various factors some physical servers and workstation cannot be virtualized. And sometimes backup of cloud workloads are in the responsibility of the customer. Or at least customer want’s to be completely safe and wants to have also a copy of his cloud data in it’s own safe place.

The new Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows solves these issues. And it also closes the gap that some enterprises face with large, heterogeneous environments and further enables workload mobility by delivering Availability for cloud-based workloads.

If you know already the extremely successful Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE, then you will love the new Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows 2.0. It’s built on Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE and includes two brand new editions, Workstation and Server.

Part of the Veeam Availability Platform

Veeam Agent for Windows is another key component of the Veeam Availability Platform and should be used for workloads that Veeam Backup & Replication cannot protect, such as:

  • Tablets, Laptops, Desktops
  • On-premises physical servers
  • Cloud-based workloads
  • VM’s running on-premises with RDM mappings
  • VM’s running on-premises on non-ESXi / Hyper-V hosts (like KVM etc.)
  • File-level backup to disk

Supported operating systems:

  • Windows 7 SP1 to Windows 10
    • has been certified by Microsoft as Windows 10 compatible!
  • Full support for Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, 2012 R2 and 2016

You need a Linux backup solution? Veeam got you covered with the Veeam Agent for Linux: https://www.veeam.com/linux-cloud-server-backup-agent.html

Enterprise-level backup and recovery

Built on rock-solid and proven Veeam technology, with Veeam Agent for Windows you get the power and flexibility you need to ensure availability for your workloads. You get all the technology you already know from Veeam Backup & Replication:

  • Active full backups
  • Application-aware processing
  • file indexing and search
  • Instant recovery to Microsoft Hyper-V VM
  • Integration with Veeam Backup & Replication
  • Server-specific scheduling and retention
  • Synthetic full backups
  • Transaction log backup for databases
  • And much more!

Endpoint protection

You’ve got some important mobile users with laptops? Your boss? Accountants? Get them covered with Veeam Agent for Windows! It’s a great solution for endpoint devices wether they are in the office, at home or somewhere on the go. It helps you to overcome everyday challenges such as lapses connectivity, hardware failures, file corruption — even ransomware or theft.

  • CryptoLocker protection for USB devices: Veeam Agent for Windows automatically ejects USB backup storage after the successful backup.
  • Endpoint protection for mobile users: backups are cached localy when the target is not available, and synced once the connection has been reestablished.
  • And many more!

Workstation and Server editions include a remote configuration and management API. You can export the local agent’s configuration to a XML file, which then can be used for a silent deployment of pre-configured agents. You can even brand the interface using the white-label option so that your employees and customers can see that they’re beeing protected by a familiar and trusted advisor.

More information about Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows 2.0

Click the link to get more information and to get your copy of Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows 2.0.

https://www.veeam.com/windows-cloud-server-backup-agent.html

Download free trial here:

Or get a free 6-month license here if you’re a current Veeam customer with no limitations:

Pricing and packaging:

Veeam – Install & Configure Veeam Agent for Windows Beta (with B&R Repository)

by

Today i had a day off in the office because of a national holiday. I used the day to relax a little, and to get some hands on the new Veeam Agent for Windows Beta. I downloaded and installed it on one of my virtual servers in my homelab. This server is a Active Directory Domain Controller, which is located on the physical ESXi host which is providing the lab platform. This virtual server wasn’t backed up until today because i was waiting for the new Veeam Agent for Windows.

Download and Setup of Veeam Agent for Windows

If you’re interested to get hands on this new Veeam Agent for Windows Beta version, go to this website and register. You’ll receive an email with further information how to download this nice piece of software. But be informed, you probably won’t get an email with download information immediately. As it was by me it took a while. I think the mails go out in waves. But stay tuned, it’s worth to wait a day or two 😉

Let’s install the Veeam Agent for Windows now. It’s pretty simple. Download the zip file, extract, double click, next, next, finish. You know the process from Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE already, if you’re using this software. Let’s have a quick look at the process.

Read more